Five Steps to Defeat the Next Pandemic

World Nano Foundation Co-Founder Paul Sheedy recently featured in The American, discussing five key steps to defeat the next pandemic to come along.

Pathogen surveillance

Humans now live ever-closer to animals, increasing the risk of new and unknown infections crossing from species such as bats and pangolins – the suspected ‘bridges’ for the COVID-19 infection – into humans, while global travel enables the rapid spread of any outbreak. Peter Daszak, an expert virus hunter at the EcoHealth Alliance research group, suggests governments should track and intervene against emerging viruses as they would terrorists, before they wreak havoc, but it is a big task. Daszak estimates there are some 1.7 million unknown mammal viruses that could spread to humans and proposes a $1 billion programme to identify at least two-thirds of these, so resources can be tailored to track and reduce pandemic risk. Others call for consensus on the right actions for the start of an outbreak to avoid the inconsistent response to COVID’s arrival; the jury is still out on which countries made the right calls on social distancing and lockdowns.

A tougher ‘World Health Organisation’

COVID-19 has highlighted the need for a cohesive global pandemic surveillance and response partnership. The World Health Organization should be that body but has been criticised for deference to China and for being slow to declare COVID as a global emergency. The WHO’s response was that it must stay diplomatic and cannot force member states to reply to its requests. But experts argue that if the world is to get better at spotting and then acting against the next pandemic, then individual nations must not hide local outbreaks until they erupt into global issues, as happened with COVID in China and Ebola in West Africa. Instead, it needs to be a more coordinated approach under a beefed up WHO-style body – one label being used is “a biological NATO” with rapid response powers. This ‘super-WHO’ might also use combined financial muscle to: fund elimination of ‘wet markets’ where wild and live animals are sold for food; discourage jungle deforestation - which pushes animals and the viruses closer to humans - and train more local field workers in remote regions to augment the current ad hoc system where the WHO, charities, universities and volunteers combine against emerging threats, but risk being too slow.

Genetic sequencing

Virus ‘Tracking and Tracing’ has enjoyed a mixed press during the COVID-19 pandemic and many scientists think it should give way to gene sequencing, made possible by a huge increase in the number of such machines, making it possible to sequence a virus genome for as little as $50. This would allow tracking and data on the virus to be assessed quickly and acted upon while also gathering intelligence on possible mutations and their resistance to current vaccines. The UK has become a leader here and used sequencing to identify what has become known as the ‘UK variant’ of COVID-19.

Faster vaccine development

One area where governments responded well against COVID-19 is in quickly developing several effective vaccines against the virus, but experts warn that we up the pace: better preparation could have made current vaccines available even earlier, while new ones need to be evolved or developed now against COVID variants and other threats as yet unknown. Some say the goal must be investment in vaccines and drugs that protect against multiple viruses.

Ironing out distribution and logistics

In a world of Amazon deliveries and supermarket shelves groaning with produce from far-flung places, it might be thought that moving medicines should be equally simple and well-organised, but COVID-19 has shown the opposite. The sometimes chaotic acquisition and transporting of Personal Protection Equipment as well as movement and distribution of vaccines – some with sensitive shipping and storage needs – plus the ad hoc vaccination infrastructures, all show that more needs to be done in this area. Incoming US President Joe Biden moved quickly to sets up an American network of mobile community vaccination centres.